Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

by John Doerr

I was mesmerized. A few unvarnished excerpts, straight from the father of OKRs:* Now, the two key phrases . . . are objectives and the key result. And they match the two purposes. The objective is the direction: “We want to dominate the mid-range microcomputer component business.” That’s an objective. That’s where we’re going to go. Key results for this quarter: “Win ten new designs for the 8085” is one key result. It’s a milestone. The two are not the same. . . . The key result has to be measurable. But at the end you can look, and without any arguments: Did I do that or did I not do it? Yes? No? Simple. No judgments in it. Now, did we dominate the mid-range microcomputer business? That’s for us to argue in the years to come, but over the next quarter we’ll know whether we’ve won ten new designs or not. It was a “very, very simple system,” Grove said, knowing simplicity was catnip to an audience of engineers.